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Jordan's female `bomber' arrested

Jordan said yesterday it had arrested a woman who was part of the team of suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on three luxury hotels in Amman but had failed to blow up her explosives.

Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher told a press conference that the Iraqi woman, the wife of one of the bombers, was in custody, in a major breakthrough in the probe into the attacks that killed 57 people and wounded about 100 more.

He said the woman would appear on Jordanian television to give details of Wednesday's bombings that have sharply jolted Jordan, one of the most stable countries in the Middle East and a close US ally.

The woman is suspected of being involved in the preparation of the attack on the Radisson SAS hotel, one of three targeted by the bombers.

"She took part in preparing an attack by her husband on the Radisson Hotel by bringing explosives into the hotel," another Jordanian official said.

Moasher identified the woman as Sajida Mubarak al-Rishai and said she was the sister of a key aide to al-Qaeda's Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a fugitive Jordanian Islamist who is Iraq's most wanted man.

He said she failed to blow up her explosives charge in the hotel ballroom where a wedding reception was in full swing.

"Her husband asked her to leave the wedding party. Once she did he detonated himself successfully," Moasher added.

He showed pictures of the explosives belt worn by the woman, which he said show "the metal balls that were also attached to the belt so that they can inflict the largest number of casualties."

He said she was the sister of Zarqawi's "emir" in the restive western Iraqi province of al-Anbar who was killed in Fallujah.

Investigators said on Saturday that they had identified those who attacked the hotels as Iraqi men who arrived from their homeland just two days before the bombings.
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